


Shove

by Clementine19



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: 100 kinks, F/M, Kinktober, Not beta'd we die like men, Tumblr Prompts, hot dad affliction got me again, joel miller
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27273517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementine19/pseuds/Clementine19
Summary: Joel’s around 51, Molly’s around 42. Let the hot old people be happy. They’re together already but not really tellin’. I couldn't help picturing this with them over doing an x reader; I hope you like it!Dina’s trying to get Ellie to talk to her old man again, people in Jackson actually have some weird approximation of house parties, and generally this is a worry-free AU.First half ofthis promptfor Kinktober is chapter one: "Your writing is fantastic and it would be great to read some rough, shove-y sex with Joel 👀 also needy, clingy sex would be cool too" and clingy will be up next!
Relationships: Joel (The Last of Us)/Original Character(s), Joel (The Last of Us)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

Joel crosses his ankles as he leans against the porch railing, Molly predictably taking up Eugene’s offer to sneak out of the town Christmas party to smoke. How the hell he’d been dragged along as a bystander was beyond him, but his brow snaps into a line when Ellie and Jesse emerge from the other side of the porch, dulled music pulsing the walls of the church.

They sidle up to Eugene, who greets them warmly and offers them the lit joint, Joel’s mouth hanging open in protest, which, to his credit, he rethinks. Ellie gives him a look before taking a drag, and he segues his aborted comments into:

“I’m runnin’, if Maria comes out here,” he notes. 

“Head to Jesse’s place and go down to the basement if you’re spooked, we’re just leaving too,” Ellie mutters, abundantly drunk, handing off to Jesse before disappearing inside presumably to give some form of goodbye. 

Molly piques an eyebrow and Eugene beams. 

“Careful, Molly, Alex’ll be excited to see you,” Jesse warns in his soft drawl. 

Molly grimaces.

“What’s that possibly mean?” Joel tightens. 

“You know how he’s lookin’. You’ll be fine,” Jesse slugs her on the shoulder and she looks at her arm and back to him, realizing the composure in his voice was not necessarily a sober man’s. Joel looks like he’s trying to fit his own smug smirk down the neck of his beer bottle. 

—

Jesse’s basement is a smoky disaster zone, most of the patrol group burrowed in to drink, smoke, or evidently crawl all over each other. Joel has the sense memory of descending into a basement when he’d visited friends at school or been forced to go get Tommy from some A&M party. 

Sarah’s mom was already gone by the time he got tackled into a wall by a pretty blonde a few years younger than him one night, in a hazy room like this. Fun-chasing as Tommy was, he saw the sliver of opportunity for a carefree night for his brother and sobered up, picked up Sarah and stayed the night at Joel’s, texting his brother to come home when he wished. 

None of it feels particularly real now—someone else’s memories—until he refocuses on the Molly, forever baffled by the way she looks at him with her whole attention.

“Joel,” Molly urges, smiling at him from the bottom of the stairs and holding her hand out for his. She’d accepted his coat on the walk over, and tall as she is, the sleeves offer just the tips of her slim fingers. 

He takes it briefly, still subtle enough, and meets her near the bottom. Ellie manifests from a corner, somehow having beaten them there. 

“Best behavior. Welcome,” she grits, shoving a—flagon? Jug? Some type of container full of harsh whisky towards them. Dina watches her interaction curiously, chin in her hand. When Ellie rejoins her, Molly sees her mouth a “you did good!” 

“You good?” Molly asks, taking the flask. 

“I feel eight thousand years old, why?” Joel takes it back briefly for another hard swig.

Jesse’s steel toes thunder down the stairs behind them, hooking an arm over Joel’s shoulders. 

“Anyone who goes out and shivs those motherfuckers is welcome. Also, this was Eugene’s idea, my place was just far enough from the—” his eyes widen in the realization of ‘I’ve said too much.’

Joel raises his hands. 

“To my grave,” he vows, Jesse snagging the sloshing liquid Joel’s trying to steady and busting between them to slink into the dark opposite end of the room, from which raucous howling resounds. 

“You think Tommy knows?” Joel glances around conspiratorially.

“Maybe. Want to get absolutely tanked?” 

Joel can’t remember the last time recreational drinking in Jackson had been more than a few beers or a single whisky; some of his less adroit coping skills in Boston spring to mind readily. Molly’s dimples are showing as she smiles at him and he breathes deep and dives. 

They work through three shots together, overhearing Eugene telling Firefly stories that’d make Tommy clobber him over the head. 

“No, they called these body shots, idiot,” one of the patrol group younger than Ellie’s age emphasizes from the far corner. He takes a shot and slams his chest into his companion and Molly bursts out laughing.

“Outbreak babies. Christ,” she comments. 

“You’re going to need to fill me in,” Joel admits, not fully recognizing the words strung together as a phrase.

Molly grabs him by the collar and whispers in his ear, his face tinging pink as she speaks, carelessly grazing his ear with her mouth. If anyone was starting to do the math around them, they definitely weren’t preventing much tonight. 

Recognizing it quickly as she speaks and intimates what they could do later, “You don’t think Ellie’s—” Joel slurs together.

“Joel, yeah, I definitely do,” Molly nods, leaving him to put his hands on his head and feign stretching, scanning for his kid and finding an empty couch where she’d Dina had been progressively draping limbs over her.

“College, that right?” one asks, her patrol nickname less a sign of erudition and more a signifier of the younger group begging for stories of what they assumed had to have been a great time. 

“Not even close,” she folds her arms. 

Joel’s looking back over at her with an unfathomable expression.

Molly raises an eyebrow at him. 

“Molly!” Both Joel and Molly snap around at the sound—an inebriated Alex, ever hopeful that Molly would take interest, ambling towards them.

“Alex,” Molly acknowledges. 

“Look I’m juss gonna—” he gears up, puffing his chest out. 

“Heyyy!” a chorus around the room lights up as Tommy comes into view, pausing at the stairs to beckon a more hesitant pair of jeans to finish the descent.

“Look what I brought,” Tommy announces, taking Maria’s hand faux-courteously and ushering her into the room. She takes a quick glance around the room for anything really out of line, but her eyes are back on Tommy.

Molly exchanges a glance with Joel, mouth turning down in a smile she’s clearly biting the inside of her cheek through. Tommy slots in by Eugene, squinting up at Joel like he can’t process his brother’s presence, Maria swarmed by red-handed occupants trying to earn her favor with the spectrum of tipple they offer. 

“I think we’re skewing the demographic a bit,” Molly turns and starts, realizing Joel had pulled much closer and they’re inches apart. 

If he leans in and whispers to her with an ill-contained smile, hand on her lower back, it’s not his business if anyone chooses to see it, even if it’s intentionally around the side visible to the whole room. 

—

They barely make it back to Joel’s house in one piece, Molly fully face planting into the foot of snow twice. Joel almost offers to throw her over his shoulders but realizes he’s already swaying plenty and opts for an arm around her waist, which slows their progress considerably. Joel stops them every few seconds, guiding her momentum towards him to kiss her indiscreetly.

“Y’know, never personally did one of them body shots,” he murmurs, Texas inflection pouring out of him. 

“How forward,” Molly teases back. 

“I think you’re supposed to be lyin’ down, actually,” he jokes, getting his keys in on the fifth try and tugging Molly inside by the waist. 

“Didn’t even make sense—” she complains, Joel’s hands on either side of her face as he kisses her. She grants him easy access, inviting the taste of the dark liquor into her mouth. He grabs her knitted hat and spikes it to the floor with far more force than necessary as he gets through her buttons with surprising dexterity. 

They kiss messily between being successfully liberated from each layer of her clothing and Joel finally scoops her hips up, forcing her legs around his waist and into the dining room with the table they were already perfectly certain could handle a decent amount of stress. 

“Pity my missed youth,” he implores, even as Molly is reclining and clearly interested in humoring him. 

“Just get over here,” she falls back to her elbows as he hovers over her, balancing on one hand.

“You know, you’d usually come at it from the side,” Molly instructs. 

“That so? I think I can do it this way,” Joel laughs, pouring the bottle he’d retrieved right onto her breastbone with no warning.

“Jooooel! Fuck!” Molly squeaks when the cold liquor slides uniformly down both sides of her abdomen, quickly chased by his hot tongue. He seems to get to her navel before the liquid can even pool there; thorough in laving the sticky liquid off of her skin, returning to her belly and swiping it clean with broad strokes.

“That was not nice,” she chastises, fisting his barely-long-enough hair in one hand, other hand pawing at the rest of him. 

It makes Joel tilt his chin up at her, a look that would be sharp if they weren’t both so obviously besotted and hammered at once. 

He twists free with next-to-no effort, moving back down and biting the side of Molly’s abdomen, tugging the skin a little as he pulls back.

Molly lets him look pleased with himself for a second, leaning heavily over her with a cocky smirk. She bites his lower lip, always searching for the appreciative grunt it earns, and isn’t surprised that he enjoys the pressure right up until she draws blood. Even in the low light (nobody drew the curtains against the reflective snow) his eyes are almost completely dark and he’s running them over her body and back to her face raptly.

Joel grasps Molly’s thighs, hard, and drags her roughly to the edge of the table, almost pinching.

Molly slaps him, not too hard, stinging on the ridge of his cheekbone. His mouth drops open for a second and she can’t help herself with how captivating he is, slowly tabulating what various replies may cost him with a clench of his jaw.

Joel watches her curious expression considerately and notes the flush along her front, returning the gesture with an extraordinary sense of control for being drunker than he’d been in years.

“Harder,” he challenges, eyes glinting in the snow-reflected light. Molly obliges, and they smile like they’ve stumbled on inventing a new art form together. 

Molly lurches them together, grasping the back of his neck and kissing him feverishly, Joel reciprocating as their fingers overlap to get him out of his shirt. Joel shifts one knee next to Molly on the table, and the nervous groan it gives in reply makes him sigh and drag her down to the floor with him. 

Molly straddles him as he kicks out of his jeans. It takes two seconds for him to flip them, slamming her back to the floor a little more roughly than he would’ve sober. He hooks the back of her right thigh over his shoulder and moves his mouth to suck on her clit without pretense. 

“Joel!” Molly whines, arcing up on the chilled floor, interrupting it with a gasp when his first two fingers spread her. He glances up and tries not to break his pace, but Molly’s so fucking stunning, wreath of cropped auburn spilled on the floor, eyes boring into him with a soft upturn to her mouth. 

“Hush,” he grumbles, smacking her thigh as he rises to his knees and drags her hips towards him. 

Molly always feels as receptive as her demeanor towards him would suggest when he first slips inside of her, but tonight it feels like she’s thrusting into him somehow. Her shoulders stick to the floor as she’s far too wobbly to curl forward while he’s got her suspended well off the ground. Molly locks her thighs and shoves one heel into Joel’s lower back, knocking him off his knees enough to push forward into his lap.

“God damn it, Mol,” he protests thinly, gazing up at her as she grinds onto him, palms fanning over his broad shoulders.

“C-close,” she mumbles, throwing her head back and basking in the rough treatment he’s lavishing on her breasts. 

Joel strokes the side of her face with a reverence she’s going to tease him for in the morning before lightly slapping her again and grasping her hair in a mostly connected movement. 

Molly comes hard, exclaiming loudly enough that he feels compelled to cover her mouth with his opposite hand. Molly’s shivering pulls him over fast, certain and uncaring that she’s drawing blood along his back. Joel cries out between some kind of euphoric giggle as she nips his palm, absurdity starting to dawn on her. 

They both rock for a long minute as he comes, Molly affectionately kissing along his high cheekbones and stroking where she’d scratched. 

Joel strokes her back in kind, boneless and comfortably counting the thrum of their heartbeats against each other. He huffs a soft laugh first.

“Don’t start. Was that good?” Molly asks. 

“If you’re good, yeah,” Joel can’t stop touching her face at the most restrained of times, and he cradles it in two hands now. He seems to beam up at her, thoroughly contented. 

Molly kisses along his cheekbones once more and he nudges her with his nose. 

“C’mon, put a drunk old man to bed,” he jokes, patting her lower back gently.


	2. Cling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joel gets taken. Molly, Ellie, and Tommy go get him. Once he's safe, Molly and Joel cling to each other (established).
> 
> This chapter is very little of that context and mostly them hanging on to each other. 
> 
> These are totally non-sequential (shove/cling) but were prompted together, so, here we are!
> 
> This is more an excerpt from an eventual chapter in Like Real People Do but it certainly meets the clinging requirements. 
> 
> There's allusion to Molly's previous brutality, which is justified.  
> \--
> 
> Molly Kane is my OC; [more about her here!](https://joelmillerthirstqz.tumblr.com/post/630506244890836992/doubleleaf-knocked-molly-out-of-the-fucking-park)
> 
> Doubleleaf [did this gorgeous art of her](https://joelmillerthirstqz.tumblr.com/post/630506244890836992/doubleleaf-knocked-molly-out-of-the-fucking-park) that I haven't stopped looking at since receiving.

Tommy and Ellie had closed the door for to bang around making dinner in the large room of the cabin they’d scouted, and Molly exhales heavily, back to the wall. Watching Joel’s erratic breathing and tossing sleep with her arms folded had consumed almost an hour, and her back was finally calling for her to sit down.

She’d settled him on a relatively untouched mattress, insulated from damage by being locked inside a dark, sealed room for apparently years. Molly’s heartbeat finally slows enough for her to register the mixture of mud and blood across her person, so she starts to peel away at layers as she approaches.

Dropping most of her things on the chair at his bedside, she pads over to the closet and flings it open, hopeful to find something clean-ish. She’s delighted to discover a couple of mostly intact flannels and a few folded pairs of pants, and she strides to the door to ask Tommy if it looked like the water heater might run off of the generator he’d pulled to life.

Joel’s hand closes around her wrist as she passes him, practically yanking her back towards him with only a firm grasp.

“Mol,” he starts, low and soft.

“You’re up,” she comments, turning quickly to sit on the edge of the bed where he’s trying to sit up. She can’t contain a gentle smile, searching his face to see if more words would come.

—

“Joel, Joel, come on, look at me, right now,” Molly pleads when she finds him, tucking a revolver into his hand. “Can you shoot? Can you walk? Joel?” she taps his cheeks hopefully, scanning his eyes. Half his face is swollen and bloodied, clearly hit with more than fists.

He just groans in reply, pupils dilated and head lolling. Molly tosses a worried glance at Tommy as she palms all over Joel for injuries, finding nothing or at least no reaction.

“Drugged him,” Tommy calls, picking up something on a tray across the room. “Found his boots, though,” he approaches carrying them, socks still neatly tucked into them.

“Okay, okay,” Molly repeats herself, taking the revolver back and tucking it into her holster. They each work quickly to get his boots on, Ellie snapping the ropes holding him with her knife and standing to cover the other two.

They finish and each get an arm under one of his, distributing his wingspan over their shoulders.

“Hey!” Ellie shouts in warning before cleanly killing a new arrival in the doorway.

“How many, Ellie?” Tommy grumbles, navigating the three of them behind a cabinet.

“No more in the hall. Give me a second,” she mutters, crouching to rustle around in her backpack and producing a trap mine. She slips down the hall to place it, silently darting back inside the room and listening intently, Joel’s labored breathing frustrating her efforts.

Bright green scans around the room before finding an empty glass, which she chucks down the hallway with a spectacular clatter

Tommy gapes open-mouthed at Ellie’s back as thundering footfalls marry agonized screams when it detonates, throwing shrapnel and at least three bodies down the hall. Molly keeps cradling Joel’s jaw to try to get him to say anything, but she can barely coax his arm to stay over her as it is.

“Okay, clear,” Ellie calls, stepping out to provide cover, though Molly and Tommy remain ready while balancing Joel. “Horses just out the door the end of the hall.”

“Joel, come on, please,” Molly mumbles to him, giving a squeeze of encouragement where her fingertips meet his ribs when he threads together a couple of stumbling steps. Tommy flashes between thunderous and concerned glances at his brother’s bowed head.

——

“You,” Joel starts inarticulately. She’d killed people so up-close that the blood had seeped through her clothes and dried on her skin, so he skims his fingertips over her collarbone and shoulder, tucking dried-stiff bloodied hair behind her ear.

“I _was_ looking to shower,” Molly replies, cradling his face in both her hands and crawling closer. Joel looks as entranced as earlier.

“Are you with me again?” Molly queries tenderly, tracing lines in his face with two careful fingertips.

Joel, in typical fashion, doesn’t respond but drags her towards his lap, grasping the back of her neck to pull her into a kiss.

“Joel, hey,” Molly can feel he’s close to alright but wants to hear it, their bodies heating together or not.

“I’m here,” he mutters, mouthing along her neck intently, heedless of the blood mixing with the wetness he leaves.

“Keep me here,” he asks, glancing up at her with hazel eyes glinting with flecks of orange in the low light.

Molly examines him for a moment before swinging her thigh to the opposite side of his lap and finding him already hard for her as their skin meets.

Joel surges up beneath her, nowhere close to the strength behind way he enfolds her usually but still insistent. He wraps his arms around her for a moment before releasing them and clawing at her underwear. Once Tommy had helped her get him on the bed earlier, she’d gently stripped him out of clothes he’d surely been in for at least two days so he could sleep reasonably well.

Molly hooks a finger in them to slip to the side, teasing her wet folds over his length while he unclasps her bra and pulls her hard against his chest. The underwear slip back into place between their bodies when she arcs at his hands grasping her breasts, sloppily finding each others’ mouths between gulps of air.

Joel grudgingly pulls back from the way she feels against his chest, almost wincing at the loss. He grasps two opposite points on the garment and rips through them, leaving the remnants wrapped around one of her defined thighs.

They brush hands eagerly trying to guide his cock inside of her, Molly hissing at the fast stretch when they succeed. She accustoms herself with a couple of shallow thrusts, hands on his shoulders. Joel sighs reflexively but grasps her behind the knees, urging her to wrap them around his waist.

Usually, he’d lean back on his hands and watch her ride him, thrilled by the way she undulates her hips, the shape of her ribcage, the way a red blush spreads across her collarbones and her mussed hair drapes over half her face. She’s gorgeous now, even unshowered and red across the chest with someone else’s blood, but he’s too spurred to hold her close. Joel tangles his hands in her hair as she’s already descended on him, pulling them tight together and kissing him urgently. He assists by drawing her into a rigid embrace, palm between her shoulder blades keeping their hearts aligned.

Molly breaks their kiss, whispering open-mouthed gratitude and praise to him.

“Can’t ever lose you,” she concludes, burying her face in his neck shyly (even fully aware that no confession could outstrip the new intimacy they’d found).

“I’m right here, I’m here,” he finds himself repeating back as they slide together, hands slipping along her back as sweat pricks her skin. They roughly grind together in the limited space their embrace affords, kissing more open-mouthed than not and sharing hushed moans.

“Joel—” Molly tries to remain aware of two other people _just_ outside the bedroom, but a soft grunt still cracks free of her throat as she comes so quickly, persistent friction bolstered by need.

With surprising agility for his relatively fragile state, Joel rears up and pushes Molly onto her back, laying her out below him and dipping his head to keep kissing her as he thrusts in. He grips her hips tight, forcing them down into the bed as his pace starts to be dictated to him instead of him dictating their pace. Coming down with shivering limbs as she is, Molly seizes a fistful of his hair and locks eyes with him, smile breaking once his eyes close amidst release that comes quickly.

He moans near the end, grasping her shoulders and holding her, Molly’s fingernails trailing down his back, legs locked tight around his waist.

Joel hisses, presence flooding back as the swollen side of his cheek rasps against the bed’s blanket.

“Okay, c’mon,” Molly murmurs into his hair, detangling their bodies with small movements and stroking his beard as he rests on her chest.

Joel just kisses her again, not seeming any more sated than before.

“There’s dinner, maybe, and ice for this,” she whispers and gestures at his face, hesitant to touch it too much.

He wriggles closer like he’s going to resist any attempts to move.

“Joel?”

“Mmm.”

She feels him say it more than hearing it.

“Can you say something so I know you’re alive?”

“Alive. And in love with you,” he mumbles against her shoulder.

“That’s a start,” she laughs until he looks up, eyes flashing in the low light.

“I’m in love with you,” Molly replies quietly. “‘M also gonna get the blood off me, now. You want help?”

“I can stand, but if you’re asking if I wanna join you,” Joel grins and tilts his head up to look at her.

—

“Tell you what, never going to need to wonder what that woman would do for you,” Tommy mutters as they clean up breakfast dishes together in the morning.

“What happened, Tommy?” Joel asks after pausing.

“She didn’t flinch,” Tommy shrugs off, not sure how much he should recount. He thinks maybe it was for them to talk through, alone; but he knows Joel wouldn’t flinch for her either.

“Yeah, but you know I knew that,” Joel eyes him, leaning against the counter.

“She shot most of them, easy enough. Tortured the one guarding you, for a while. Used a few as human shields. Beat one to death after he was disarmed. Not my business, but it doesn’t seem like she was just some college student before all this,” Tommy comments.

“Doesn’t sound like more than you ’n’ Ellie did,” Joel replies.

Tommy looks up at him from under his brows, pushing a stray lock of hair off of his face.

“We were all just some something before, Tommy, it’s been a rough couple of decades,” Joel starts to stiffen, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Look, Tess scared the shit out of me, but she was _just_ practical when she did things. I’m sayin’ Molly ain’t _just_ that, maybe,” Tommy relents.

“Tommy, _I’m_ not just that, so what are you saying?”

“I’m—” he shrugs vaguely at the whole kitchen.

“You’re sayin’ because you’ve moved on from havin’ to do what’s necessary you find it upsettin’?”

“No, Joel, I’m not. I dunno what I mean, exactly, but I think you fit each other.”

“Oh, fuck you, Tommy. Fuck you,” Joel grumbles, grasping the coat he’d dug out of the hall closet last night and trying to coax it over his broad shoulders.

“I’m not being critical, Molly’s incredible, I’d just not seen someone get quite that vicious with uninfected in so long,” Tommy casts his eyes down.

“You are, because you think we’ll feed each other. Like you thought Tess made me worse, even if Tess didn’t make me anythin’ at all,” Joel counters as he moves to the door.

Stopping, he turns and continues: “Furthermore, I’ve talked to Eugene. I know what you were like as a Firefly, and I taught you half of it. So fuck off,” Joel continues.

Tommy winces: ‘furthermore’ was never the start of a list that was leading to great memories with his brother.

“Joel, I’m not tryin’ to say anything about it,” Tommy trails off, mouth open and eyes on the doorframe.

Ellie gives him a withering, piteous look.

“Tommy, you had to burn your clothes last night, too,” she comments.

“Looks like you should,” Joel remarks to her kindly, softening at Ellie’s presence.

“Molly was the right amount of violent. It was the three of us and twenty-five dudes, starving, but still armed. What’s your deal?” Ellie glowers at Tommy, a perfect mirror of Joel’s older-brother disdain. It’s uncanny enough that he physically recoils.

“I’ve known my brother a little longer, that’s all,” Tommy admits.

“Is this Boston? Still?” Joel grits.

“What was Boston?” Ellie point-blanks.

Joel sighs and puts his hands on his hips, the groan of the suede jacket he’d found indicating it wasn’t going to stay whole for long if he kept moving so much.

“Where I met you?” he tries, even as Ellie’s eyes uncharitably narrow with each word.

“Joel,” she punctuates it with annoyance.

“Do you remember,” he starts, “…when we got to Pittsburgh, that hunter lookin’ for tourists? How he faked being hurt?”

“I remember Pittsburgh, yeah,” Ellie says without a tone.

“Last time we ran that—to try to get food, supplies, anything—last time I saw him before Jackson,” Joel says, pointing to Tommy.

“And he never wanted to see your face again,” Ellie fills in.

Molly pauses silently in the hall, giving Joel a temporarily inscrutable expression. After a moment, she gives the gentle grimace of comprehension without judgment. She nods, and for the life of his panicked heart he couldn’t say whether it was a good nod or a bad nod.

—

Molly blinks awake with defined forearms clenching and unclenching around her waist, Joel twisting through a nightmare as he often does. He’s unnervingly nonverbal when it happens, so she rolls in his arms to face him, stroking hair off of his forehead. Joel blinks awake without startling, hazels looking foggy before he grounds himself to the bridge of Molly’s nose, her pink mouth; wide, concerned eyes.

“What’d they do to you?” Molly asks.

“Wasn’t that,” he answers quietly, scrubbing a palm over his face. Pale pre-sunrise light tips into the large windows of his bedroom in Jackson, igniting the red in her hair and illuminating freckles.

“Sarah?” Molly mutters.

“Boston,” he clarifies.

“Yep. Thinks he’s the only one?” she alludes to Tommy’s indignation, frequent citation of nightmares at what Joel was capable of.

“He thinks it comes naturally to me,” Joel explains.

“Doesn’t care for that, does he?” Molly asks, and its clear she heard everything.

“He shot a soldier, just a kid, in the head on outbreak day for killin’ Sarah. Didn’t blink. Didn’t stop saving me after, either,” Joel says quietly.

“Nobody’s living through this clean,” Molly supplies, stroking his beard. The drop between expecting a wiry texture and its actual softness always feels so distinct to her.

Joel shakes his head, miles to go in repairing his relationship with Tommy. Years, miles, and a lot of forgiveness. Still, idiot ignored his wife’s protests to follow Molly and Ellie after him anyway.

“I think they gave me, dunno, bunch of painkillers? Wasn’t ever my thing, just felt warm and suffocated, like I was leaking all the good blood I had in a few hours and wouldn’t ever feel that good again,” Joel rambles. “And I’m really nauseous now, if that’s anything.”

“Made you manageable enough to get your boots off, which I respect,” Molly teases, both of them frequent offenders in passing out in their boots when they’d drunk too much.

“Can’t imagine it taking much less to shut _you_ up,” Joel tries to read something in her face.

“I told you what I did for me. I didn’t _think_ , not once, doing it to get back to you,” Molly explains.

“I tell you how I got back to Ellie, after the cannibals?”

“You mean with rebar through your stomach?”

“She’d done a nice stitching job, found some pills and booze,” Joel dismisses.

“I killed half the settlement. By the time I got close to her, they saw me and just ran,” he confesses.

“How’d you find her?” Molly asks, a few good guesses prepared.

“Dragged two guys to a cabin,” Joel starts.

“I know this one. Ellie told me on the ride to get you, in case we needed it,” Molly grimaces.

“Did you?”

“Tommy seems to have some opinions about how I handled it,” she sighs.

Joel looks at her receptively, silent.

“Held one in front of me, took out a limb each time he lied. Grabbed the next. So on,” Molly looks away.

Joel tugs her somehow closer, warmth radiating off of his bare chest.

“Not your worst…best? Work,” Joel comments.

“They wanted to come to Jackson. Saw I wasn’t looking half dead, shot my horse, knocked me out. Just had mouths to feed and wanted supplies.”

“Joel, those weren’t just mouths. All men though, like your cannibals,” Molly pieces together.

“Tommy and Maria’ll figure it out,” Joel diverts, rolling onto his back, thoughtfully stroking the knobs of Molly’s spine as she rests her chin on her forearms over his chest.

“You look better,” Molly observes.

“Buy me dinner first,” he groans, half-assed and throwing his forearm over his eyes as the light begins to slant right where he lays.

“Make you breakfast instead, old man,” Molly chides, crawling up to kiss him just once before rising.

“Leave my shirt—” he tries to say proactively, sitting up and watching her shrug the flannel he’d flung off last night on, buttoning one button at a time while watching him with a smirk.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: talk to your partners, no matter how good your rapport, before pushing boundaries like these, especially if you’re inebriated. This is fantasy; negotiating consent with real humans isn’t! 
> 
> Prompt me over at [the ol' tumbs](https://joelmillerthirstqz.tumblr.com/)


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